Journalism Today. 14 July 2025
By Eduardo Suárez and Matthew Leake
🗞️ 3 top news stories
1. A newsroom under fire over Gaza. A new piece by Stephen Armstrong and Rachel Sylvester looks at how the BBC is approaching its coverage of the war in Gaza. The article suggests that complaints from all sides are creating a certain paralysis in the newsroom, with editors not running stories for fear of creating more backlash. | The Observer
A quote from the piece: “Sources suggest the constant monitoring of BBC output by activists on both sides, and the weaponising of the complaints procedure, has created a newsroom that overthinks stories. As one of them observes: ‘There’s this feeling – should we do the hotel bombing story, or should we do a piece about mosquitoes? And it’s so much easier to do the mosquitoes.’”
📊 Why does it matter? Our own research suggests the BBC is by far the most widely used source of news in the UK both online and offline, and it is one of the most highly trusted sources of news. It is also more widely used as a source of news than many of its peers among other public service media. | Read
2. The impact of US cuts on global media. A new piece by US journalist Danny Fenster looks at the impact of Donald Trump’s cuts on journalism funding for dozens of news organisations around the world. For a few years, Fenster was the editor of Frontier Myanmar, a locally owned English-language magazine that received a small USAID grant which helped us cover the 2020 election and the military junta’s takeover. | Nieman Reports
A quote from the piece: “Journalism in Myanmar was never lucrative, and many reporters there supplement their incomes with odd jobs. But the recent cuts have caused a ripple effect, and while many desperately want to continue reporting on their country, nearly all of them are struggling to find ways to do so.”
📚From our archive. Back in March our reporters Gretel Kahn, Marina Adami and Eduardo Suárez published a piece on this very issue based on our conversations with 15 journalists, editors and experts from all over the world. The article offers examples of the impact of this perfect storm for outlets in a dozen countries, including Colombia, Ukraine and El Salvador. | Read
3. A rising media mogul. Joshi Herrmann, founder of local news publisher Mill Media, describes the battle between Rupert Murdoch and Paul Marshall to lead UK conservative media. “Those in the know describe a power battle between the two men, played out in auctions for venerable news titles and via eye-watering job offers for each other’s journalists,” he writes in this powerful piece. | The Londoner
Just one of many juicy tidbits. “Murdoch’s bid, said to be £60 million, was well over the £40 million valuation given by analysts. But it was blown out of the water by Marshall’s winning offer: £100 million, a staggering sum for a company that typically generates around £20 million in income and less than £3 million in profit each year.”
📚If you are interested in Paul Marshall’s rise… we recommend this detailed profile by investigative journalist Peter Geoghegan, which includes many details about Marshall’s origins and his improbable rise | LRB's piece · LRB’s podcast
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📊 From our DNR 2025
📱How partisan influencers attract US audiences. One-fifth in our US sample (22%) said they had come across podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan discussing or commenting on news in the previous week, with 14% saying the same about Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News anchor who now operates content across multiple platforms. Other widely accessed personalities include Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Ben Shapiro from the right and Brian Tyler Cohen and David Pakman from the left. As the chart shows, Carlson’s and Rogan’s audiences skew young and male. | Learn more
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📺 Did you miss our Digital News Report 2025 global launch? Our colleagues Marina Adami and Gretel Kahn wrote a summary. | Read the summary ⋅ Watch the launch
⏯️ Watch and listen to our opening Digital News Report podcast. Lead author Nic Newman and co-author Richard Fletcher break down all the findings with our Director, Mitali Mukherjee. | YouTube · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · Transcript
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☕ Coffee break
Substack may just be the latest platform “whose promises we’re buying into despite all evidence,” writes Isabelle Roughol, who suggests journalists and publishers should learn from past investment of time and energy in platforms like Twitter and Facebook. | LinkedIn
Linda Yaccarino’s departure as CEO of X came after Elon Musk stepped back from politics and following the merger with xAI. “Now that he’s back into his businesses, he was never going to put her to be the head of an AI company at all,” one insider tells the FT. | Financial Times
The success of an AI-generated band, Velvet Sundown, which got one million plays on Spotify, has raised questions about authenticity, transparency with audiences, and the responsibility of platforms. | Guardian
Warnings are being sounded around recent threats to Iranian Nobel peace laureate Narges Mohammadi from figures within the Iranian government. The Free Narges Coalition Steering Committee says the threats “mark a dramatic escalation in the tactics used to silence one of Iran’s most prominent voices of conscience and defender of human rights.” | Reporters Without Borders
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📚 One piece from our archive
🌱 The mental health risks of climate reporting. With extreme weather taking hold in many parts of the world, our colleague Greg Cochrane heard from six journalists in our climate network about the threats to their mental health from covering climate stories and how they try to mitigate them. | Read
A quote. “While covering the climate crisis, journalists are dealing with many emotional issues. We see people going through loss time and time again, whether that’s for their livelihood, property or family members. We are trying to communicate that to our audience, and doing that is almost like regurgitating this trauma,” says Seigonie Mohammed, a news anchor from Trinidad and Tobago.
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